Dive In But Be Warned: This Farce Isn't Deep

Movies - REVIEW - `The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou'

Wes Anderson Tried To Create A Whimsical Ode To His Heroes, But The Humor Is Forced And Effect Is Uneven.

December 24, 2004|By Roger Moore, Sentinel Movie Critic

Suppose the late undersea explorer and self-promoter Jacques Cousteau had spent his downtime watching old Sea Hunt, SeaQuest DSV or James Bond Thunderball tapes and fantasizing.

Suppose he is derided by the scientific community as a fraud, just another filmmaker, a showman struggling to get financing for his undersea movies.

Suppose he needs to do a few sit-ups before he dares wear a Speedo in front of a camera.

Suppose no longer. Bill Murray is the perfect cut-rate Cousteau in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, the latest exercise in the absurd by Wes Royal Tenenbaums Anderson.

Zissou is still coasting along on the fading fame of a long-gone heyday of TV shows, endorsement deals and worldwide fan clubs. Like Cousteau, this aging oceanographer takes Team Zissou out on his rusty, WWII-vintage research vessel, the Belafonte -- Cousteau's ship was Calypso, get it? They doff their matching stocking caps and don their matching wetsuits to dive in search of adventure and discoveries in the deep blue.

He has a wealthy, smart wife (Anjelica Huston) the "brains behind the operation," his own private island and vain hopes of finding financing for an expedition to hunt down and kill the unknown jaguar shark whom he says ate his friend and teammate, Esteban (Seymour Cassel).

There's competition from the uppity Alistair Hennesy (Jeff Goldblum, at his Goldblummiest).

"Be nice to Ali," Steve purrs to his bride. "He's my nemesis."

But the team, which includes Willem Dafoe sporting a German accent, and Shine's Noah Taylor as a Russian tech-whiz, has a new member. Ned (Owen Wilson) may be a son Steve never knew he had. The lad is a drawling pilot for Air Kentucky, whose uniforms seem more suited to fried-chicken franchises than aviation. He fits right in with the loons of Team Zissou. If only his accent didn't come and go.

And there's this pregnant reporter along for the ride, played by Cate Blanchett, still channeling the Katharine Hepburn she did for The Aviator. Steve needs the publicity, but she just thinks he's a fake and a has-been.

They encounter money problems in fictional far-away ports, and exotic (animated) sea life, pirates and an agent for the bank that has secured their film's financing. He's played by Bud Cort, who starred in Harold and Maude and Brewster McLoud, Hollywood films from a more surreal age -- 30 years ago.

That's perhaps a clue to unraveling this wacky odyssey. Anderson is trying to re-create the anarchic tone of early work of Robert Altman and Hal Ashby.

Team Zissou has a Brazilian diver-guitarist (Seu Jorge) who sings an endless catalog of old David Bowie tunes, in Portuguese, an homage to Altman's M*A*S*H. There's a topless script supervisor, a three-legged dog, zany gun-battles and more shots of guys who shouldn't be wearing Speedos than you can count.

Anderson is full of ideas about the sort of adventures a child might envision an undersea explorer having, about the ethical compromises a dinosaur like Cousteau might have faced, had he come along just a few years later. Anderson treats the sea as the fantastical mystery it must have seemed like to early Cousteau and Lloyd Bridges (Sea Hunt) fans.

Anderson just had no one there to edit his spatter-art inspiration into a movie.

But the whimsy feels forced, and Murray is the only player allowed to hunt for laughs. More Goldblum would have helped. Wilson acts overshadowed, Dafoe has too little screen time and Blanchett is only a middling straight man.